


Upstairs, Downstairs

by romanticalgirl



Category: Hornblower - C. S. Forester
Genre: F/M, Gen, Period-Typical Racism, Racist Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 20:53:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/752962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanticalgirl/pseuds/romanticalgirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Be secret and take defeat</p>
            </blockquote>





	Upstairs, Downstairs

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://nolivingman.livejournal.com/profile)[**nolivingman**](http://nolivingman.livejournal.com/) for the beta. This was originally written for the [](http://aos-challenge.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://aos-challenge.livejournal.com/)**aos_challenge** Quotation challenge with the quote _"What is history but a fable agreed upon?"_ \- Napoleon
> 
> This story deals with inherent race and class issues of the time from the perspective of a lady's maid who was a slave, however well she was treated. 
> 
> Originally posted 1-1-08

You don’t know truth. Truth isn’t them pretty words the white people give you. It isn’t ‘the way of the world’ or even ‘the way things are’. They give you lies that make them looks good, makes them looks like they know what they doing, makes them look like they the good guys, even when them boys killing everybody just as white as they are.

No, truth is what the people in the kitchens tell it to be, what the people likes me, people with dark skin or downcast eyes tell you. Truth ain’t no pretty picture. It’s dirty and black as my skin.

Take my Lady. She ain’t nobody’s fool, but she ain’t nobody’s truth-teller neither. She all prim and proper and English like that’s some sort of thing to be proud of, but she human. She get down in the dirt, just like me, wrestling with big men who make her cry like a baby when they don’t give her what she want. I seen her with her legs spread, begging for more, shoving her fist in her mouth to keep from bringing the whole house down on her head while her husband be dining with his other men, not even knowing his wife rutting away just down the hall.

She no different from everyone else, either. Sometimes I think the white dirtier than we are. Like her man, Hornblower. He so proper on the ship, like the King hisself watching him over his shoulder, but I know how he look at her. And I know, now that she married to another man, that he still want her. I know because my Lady send me to meet him and tell him she can’t come, and he take me right there in the back alley, all angry and frustrated and wanting her. He don’t care what flesh it is, and he knows I take it back to my Lady and give it to her just like he would, give it to her good and long and hard, just like what he pants in my ear. She touch the place where he press my face against the brick and scraped it raw, she kiss it and tell me I’m her good girl. That’s truth, but you won’t see that in no books or in the papers.

That little wife of his know the truth too. She try to hide it, but I see her eyes. She got my eyes. Turned down to keep from seeing, but seeing all the same. She’s what I be if I be white, trash but for the color of my skin. No class made low class by a pretty man. She a brood mare, like my momma was, legs spread wide, though she pretends it’s about love, when we all know it ain’t that. He don’t love her, not like he love my Lady. He do his duty, because that’s his truth, but it’s all a lie too.

I keep her talking for my Lady. Ask about her baby on the way, the one he made her fat with. My Lady don’t like that baby growing in her belly, so I makes her teas thick with lemon and mint so she can’t taste nothing but that. I knows things my momma taught me, and my Lady knows I knows them. I tell her drink, but she keep talking, but soon she won’t talk no more. She knows the end of the story as good as I does, and knows people like her don’t get the man in the end. She thinks the same goes for me, but she don’t know that my color save me where hers won’t. Not this time. Maybe not ever, not really.

My Lady trust me, like she should, because she know I know too much, so she know she be good to me. I ain’t on my back unless I wanna be, and when her man get out of line, she make it up to me. Her fat husband die and we both rejoice in that. She want her Hornblower back, and I okay with that too, okay with him on top of me, inside me when my lady can’t handle him, though she watches us those times, standing in dark corners like she me. She likes the truth the way I see it. She wants to know the secrets I know. I let her see sometimes, let her see just enough to make her want to see more. She need me for that. Truth’s something only I give her, only I can.

My Lady says her men gonna be famous, gonna beat that Napoleon and change the world. Gonna make history. I don’t tell her that history ain’t truth neither. Truth ain’t who wins and loses. Truth ain’t who’s right or wrong. Truth is back hallways and abandoned rooms. Truth is at night when lights are out and people sneak around, slipping into beds that ain’t their own. Truth is in the moonlight and behind closed doors. Truth is mine. What everyone else gots is a lie, whichever one they can live with.  



End file.
